The story of Jean Valjean; from Victor Hugo's Les misérables;

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I

In 1815, M. Charles-Frangois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D. He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D. since 1806. ,

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all, in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a. very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families.

The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, —did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B. [ Brignolles]._ He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.

About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy curé, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said, abruptly : —

“Who is this good man who is staring at me?”

“Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”

That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the curé, and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D.

M. Myriel had arrived at D. accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been ¢he servant of M. le Curé, now assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her matvrity; and this allowed the angel to be seen. Her person seemed made of a shadow;

u LES MISERABLES. 3 a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping, —a mere pretext for the soul’s remaining on the earth.

Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath, — in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.

On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect.

The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.

II. THE episcopal palace of D. adjoins the hospital

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D. in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,— the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion.

The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.

Three days after his arrival, the: Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house.

“Monsieur the director of the hospital,” said he to him, “ how many sick people have you at the present moment ?”

“Twenty-six, Monseigneur.”’

“That was the number which I counted,” said the Bishop.

“ The beds,” pursued the director, ‘are very much crowded against each other.”

Bee FANTINE. pay

“That is what I observed.”

“The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with ‘difficulty that the air can be ee in eather

“So it seems to me.’

‘And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents.” |

“That was what I said to myself.”

“In case’ of epidemics, —and a hundred patients at times, —we know not what to do.”

‘ That is the thought which occurred to me.”

“What would you have, Monseigneur?” said the director.

““One must resign one’s self.” .

This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground-floor.

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then.he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital.

“Monsieur,” said he, “how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?” |

“ Monseigneur’s dining-room ?”’ sbilbiitied the stiles director.

The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed. to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes.

“Tt would hold full twenty beds,” said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice :— |

“ Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.”’

On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand: —

NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

MOE EMeUC ermal ys Se Se ent es et oe ene Eee hE Oe UP SCO TIVTES, Society of the mission . . . be eek Vahne Mah tes Wdaeel PAST a OORLEE For the Lazarists of Monélidiers i bbleon anarlines Ate ued Poca) (BD 113 due OCA ee meminary, lor 1oreignimissions in| Paris’)... + 4 Cie... ») » 200.” Congregation of the Holy Spirit. . . . es rrguer ead gts a aitoh Religious establishments of the Holy Ibs 2° AVS VOR animes (i @haritable maternity societies 2 tl ea a i soak eee atk OG 9 ' Extra, for that of Arles. .°. . SE ite AG ae eR 50> ts - Work for the amelioration of prisons. . . 2.0... .~: 400 =|” Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . . 2.05. 500 ” To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt . . . . . 1,000 ” Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the diocese. . . 2,000 ” Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes . . . 100)~

Congregation of the ladies of D., of Maibach asi ‘of Sif oubiient

for the gratuitous fesenction of moor girlie a a Giak sos ROO U5 oe For the poor. . . EEE Pe OL OE ie a Eee My personarexpenses * ./477 SPAS) SPP PIh IY | PS MOI CUE hdo0. 15m ROLE ama Tatts SEA at ai ae a Ve te pa tas a) Fe. ta ek ROOT ELE

M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period that he occupied the see of D. As has been seen, he called it regulating his household expenses.

This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D. as at one and the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed ; when he acted, she yielded her adherence. ‘Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. . It will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these. fifteen hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted. _

And when a village curate came to D., the Bishop still found means to entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.

One day, after he had been in D. about three months, the Bishop said: —

“ And still I am quite cramped with it all!”

“I should think so!” exclaimed Madame Magloire. ‘ Monseigneur has not even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.”

“Hold!” cried the Bishop, “ you are quite right, Madame Magloire.”

And he made his demand.

Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Alowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits.

That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a memorandum conceived in the following terms : —

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.

For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital . . . 1,500 livres. For the maternity charitable society of Aix. . . ..... 250 ” For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan. . . . . 250 ” Forfoundlings}:7/:. 40) stove 3 Tkiwot Soe. ROGERS Men §607 > 7 Mor orphans oye" oo 0s CEM S t's: clube fol iS joi OM enEe emer OO mm

Total e e . . piere e ° e * e . ° « . . . . 3,000 ei

As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans, dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.

After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door, —the latter in search of the alms which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands; but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.

Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil; ‘no matter how much money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.

The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the country side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among the names of their bishop, that which had a meaning for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus when we have occasion toname him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him.

“T like that name,” said he. ‘“ Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.”

We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is prob- © able; we confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original. / it,

THE Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his carriage into alms. The diocese of. D. is a fatiguing one. There are very few plains and a great many mountains ; hardly any roads; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task. The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.

His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace. One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a’ book. This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the Bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it. ‘“ Madame Magloire,” said he, ‘“‘ fetch me a chair. My greatness [grandeur | does not reach as far as that shelf.’’ |

Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account. He said, “ Examine the road over which the fault has passed.”

Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-simner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the _ ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as

follows:— , | riii10o 8% i

“Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, check it, repress it, aud obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience ; but the fault thus committed is venial ; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.

“To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

‘The least possible sin is the law of man, No sin at all is the dream of the angel.”

A tragic event occurred at D, , A man was condemned to death for murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments, They sent for the curé. It seems that he refused to come, saying, “ That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place.” . This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, “Monsieur le Curé is right : it ts not his place; it is mine.”

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the ““mountebank,” called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him, - forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and — there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. ‘The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced him, and, at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him: ‘God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life: the Father is there.” When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people draw aside to let him pass, They did not know which was most worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble dwelling which he designated, with a smile, as zs palace, he said to his sister, “/ have just officiated pontifically.”’

Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least understood, there were people in the town who said, when’ commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, “/¢ zs affectation.”

This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms. The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and admired him.

M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his love, the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment for silence, he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said : —

‘“‘ Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.”’ He knew that faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by pointing ‘out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a Star.

IV

THE private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts as his public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D. lived would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could have viewed it close at hand.

Like all old men, he slept little. This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an hour; then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows. ‘Then he set to work.

A bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary of the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine, — prayer-books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc., — charges to write, sermons to authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the Holy See ; and a thousand matters of business.

What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business, and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted. to work. Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil ; he called them gardening. “The mind is a garden,” said he.

Towards midday, when the weather-was fine, he went forth and took a stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He was seen walking alone, buried in his own > thoughts, his eyes cast down, supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden tassels of large bullion to droop from its three points.

It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said that his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The children and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. ‘They pointed out his house to anyone who was in need of anything. |

Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money ; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.

On his return, he dined. ‘The dinner resembled his breakfast.

At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could be more frugal than this repast.

After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing.

Toward nine o’clock in the evening the two women betook themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone until morning on the ground floor.

It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of the dwelling of the Bishop of D.

The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. ‘The first room, opening on the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory, except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without passing through the dining-room, At the end of the suite, in the oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D.

The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden’a stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital. “Tam paying my tithes,” he said.

His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad weather. As wood is extremely dear at D., he hit upon the idea of having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his winter salon.

In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an antique sideboard painted pink, in watercolors. Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white

* napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.

His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D. had more than once assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for Monseigneur’s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,’ he said, “is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”

In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an arm-chair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the arm-chair from the bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.

It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it was summer. |

There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been obliged to hoist this bergére up to the first story through the window, as the staircase was too narrow ; it could not, therefore, be reckoned among the possibilities in the way of furniture.

Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition had been to be able to purchase a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan’sneck style, with a sofa. But this would have cost five hundred

LES MISERABLES. in 15 francs at least, and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal ?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop’s bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the bed, —a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge ; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the other near the _ bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with silver-leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on a background of threadbare black velvet in a, wooden frame from which the gilding had fallen; near the glass-door a large table with an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes; before the table an arm-chair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory.

All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground floor as well as those on the first floor, were whitewashed, which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.

However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the paper which had been washed over, paintings ornamenting the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament-house of the Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red bricks, which were washed every. week, with straw mats in front of all the

16 ees FANTINE.

beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole luxury which the iia permitted. He said, “That takes nothing from the poor.”